This invention relates generally to analysis of human speech. More particularly, it relates to a note taking function which allows speech professionals to document the progress of a student by generating a report which includes written description, speech statistics and speech samples.
There are several professions in which speech professionals make assessments of the accuracy and progress in producing particular types of human speech. Speech pathologists are professionals who work with individuals who do not speak in a "normal" manner. This may be due to various speech impediments or physical deficiencies which impair these individuals' abilities to produce what would be considered normal human speech. Typically, a speech pathologist will work with such an individual over a period of time to teach him how to more accurately produce the desired sounds. Similarly, language coaches teach a student a foreign language, with the proper accent and so forth. Actors frequently use dialect coaches; professional singers take voice lessons. Although the type of speech and sounds vary within the particular disciplines of these specialties, they share common thread in that human speech is made and, through a series of lessons, hopely improved.
Like many tasks in today's society, computers and computer software have provided important tools to improve these processes. SpeechViewer is an IBM product that provides analytical feedback about speech production. It is used by Speech and Language Pathologists, Teachers of the Deaf, and other professionals who work with voice, dialect, foreign languages, and singing. SpeechViewer computes acoustic analyses, such as fundamental frequency, signal intensity, and spectral information and transforms the data into animated graphical feedback that varies as functions of sound.
While the professionals using the product were pleased with various analysis functions provided in prior versions of the product, SpeechViewer lacked features helpful in documenting the findings which were made through the use of the product. For example, speech pathologists are usually obligated to maintain detailed clinical notes for the purposes of charting patient progress. In the public school environment, Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) must be filed to identify the characteristics of a student's disability, the objectives of planned remediation, the outcome of that remediation, and planning of future remediation services. For non-school services that are paid by 3rd party payers, such as insurance companies and Medicare, equivalent documentation is required to justify the quality of care for compensation. Even when the speech professional was not obligated to produce a report, e.g., private voice lessons, such a capability might be welcome.
Until the present invention, speech professionals typically relied on manual documentation, i.e. pencil-and-paper procedures. While more general purpose applications such as word processors can be used to generate reports, they did not provide any means of providing speech analysis. No single tool was available which could analyze speech, gather information and present it in a report format.
The present invention provides a solution to this problem.